Yellow Week

I'll call him Jack. Eighty-four years old, 57 years married to the same woman, WWII vet, all-around nice guy. Shows up one day to his primary care physician YELLOW. Eyes, skin, urine, I'm sure his tears are yellow if we checked. Pancreatic cancer. In retrospect, that's what that nagging backache was after finishing the back nine last weekend. That's why he had success for the first time in years shedding that tire around his waist. That's why he's a little more tired.

Bradley. Fifty-four, schoolteacher, 3 kids. Christian man, as if that matters (I'm Buddhist) somehow. YELLOW. Just sitting around one day, on a Sunday, kids in tow, when his wife notices a strange tinge in his eyes. Never seen it before. More pronounced in the natural sunlight of the outdoors. Hmm. Maybe it's nothing. The next day it's worse. Did you eat something weird? Nausea, anything? Nah, just yellow. Imagine the shock on those five faces when I tell them that he's got bile duct cancer. Say what? What the f-ck is bile duct cancer? Well... sir... blah, blah, blah... it sucks.

Sally. Fifty-one, mother of one, divorced, two sisters. Very, very funny woman. Coarse, crass, was once probably a really good-looking woman, but a few too many six-packs and a couple decades of Camel Lights really show themselves. But, there is something just "illuminating" about her. Call it personality. Call it spunk. She's funny. Bitingly funny. Oh, yep, and she's yellow as all get out. Some right upper quadrant abdominal pain for weeks. Liver cancer. Oh and a little cirrhosis to boot. Yikes. Double yikes...

Then there is the 74 year old woman with relapsed breast cancer and a belly swollen as all get out... the ninety year old with metastatic lung cancer... he was yellow, but the roto-rooter GI specialists took care of that blockage... well, at least for the next few weeks. then there is... on and on...

Things always seem to come in bunches. Kind of like when you just can't seem to buy a date and then other times, when you're in a great relationship and it seems like everyone and her mother is giving you the "come on" sign. Well, sometimes it seems like symptoms come in bunches.

This week is Yellow Week. Stent here, ERCP there, chemo, radiation, Whipple, unblock, reblock, percutaneous. Jaundice (as being yellow is termed officially) is never a good thing. It's downright disturbing and scary. For doctor as well as patient. There is something so profoundly upsetting as such a change in appearance as COLOR. Something that just screams of illness, that dehumanizes and debilitates and changes forever our perception of ourselves and others. Jaundice. Even the word stinks.